Choose Your Mindset: It’s All Up to You!

Psychologist Carol Dweck’s fine 2007 book Mindset: The Psychology of Success makes a simple but powerful point. Our fates are up to us. We choose our fate by adopting one of two mindsets. Pick the GROWTH mindset over the FIXED mindset.

“For 20 years my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. …Believing that your qualities are carved in stone – the fixed mindset – creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. …Some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age… (with it)..every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail?

There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with…In this mindset, the growth mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. …People with the growth mindset believe that a person’s true potential is unknown and unknowable, that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil and training.

· Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children

· Golfer Ben Hogan was graceless and uncoordinated

· Photographer Cindy Sherman failed her first photography course

· Actress Geraldine Page was advised to give up for lack of talent?

“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

So – choose your mindset. Pick “growth” And when someone tells you that you can’t do something, turn that into rocket fuel – and DO it!